Flagellar filament of bacteria

Introduction
(An introduction and overview remains to be provided.)

R vs. L forms
Quoted from Maki-Yonekura, Yonekura and Namba, 2010 : "The bacterial flagellar filament is a helical propeller rotated by the flagellar motor for bacterial locomotion. The filament is a supercoiled assembly of a single protein, flagellin, and is formed by 11 protofilaments. For bacterial taxis, the reversal of motor rotation switches the supercoil between left- and right-handed, both of which arise from combinations of two distinct conformations and packing interactions of the L-type and R-type protofilaments."

The structure of a straight R form of the flagellar filament was reported in 2003, by fitting and extending a crystallographic model of the monomer (1io1) into an electron cryomicroscopic density map with resolution approaching 4 &Aring;. The resulting full-length R form monomer, 1ucu, included terminal alpha helices that were absent in the crystallographic model.

The structure of a straight L form of the flagellar filament was reported in 2010. The monomer, 3a5x, was obtained by fitting the R-form monomer 1ucu into the L form electron cryomicroscopy density map.

R to L Morphs


Below are morphs between the R and L forms of the monomer (1ucu and 3a5x respectively) and the filament. Filament models were kindly provided by T. Fujii and K. Namba.


 * R to L Monomer Morph (all residues aligned) (restore initial scene )


 * R to L Monomer Morph (terminal helices aligned)


 * (Filament morphs are in preparation. Eric Martz 07:10, 15 May 2011 (IDT))